[Swallow by H. Rider Haggard]@TWC D-Link bookSwallow CHAPTER XVI 2/15
Follow me, you black fellows, for we had best be off," and, stooping down he lifted Suzanne in his arms and walked away with her as though she were a child. For a while they followed the windings of the stream, keeping under cover of the reeds and bushes that grew upon its banks.
Then they struck out to the right, taking advantage of a cloud which dimmed the face of the moon for a time, for they wished to reach the kloof without being seen from the waggon.
Nor, indeed, were they seen, for the driver and voorlooper were seated by the cooking-fire on its further side, smoking, and dozing as they smoked.
Only the great thoroughbred horse winded them and snorted, pulling at the riem with which he was tied to the hind wheel of the waggon. "Something has frightened the _schimmel_," said the driver waking up. "It is nothing," answered the other boy drowsily; "he is not used to the veldt, he who always sleeps in a house like a man; or, perhaps, he smells a hyena in the kloof." "I thought I heard a sound like that of a gun a while ago down yonder by the sea," said the driver again.
"Say, brother, shall we go and find out what made it ?" "By no means," answered the voorlooper, who did not like walking about at night, fearing lest he should meet spooks.
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